Creating Frontline Success

Luke Jamieson, Regional Director at Centrical ANZ, talks to CSIA about how real-time performance management, microlearning, gamification and coaching can be a real gamechanger for creating a great employee experience to support a positive customer experience.

In a post-pandemic world, what are the key ways businesses need to pivot to keep productivity, output and customer satisfaction high, while maintaining employee well-being?

Employees are coming out of a difficult season and approaching work in the post-pandemic world will require businesses to focus on creating a strong workplace culture that provides a sense of belonging. Ultimately this will lend itself to engaged, productive employees who deliver strong customer experiences.

For many, productivity has been boosted thanks to the focus working from home can provide. However, being away from the office has had an effect on team camaraderie and collaboration with many organisations concerned that employees no longer feel part of something bigger. This is driving some companies to force people back into the office which is raising challenges such as high attrition and quiet quitting.

Organisations need to emphasise how an individual's contributions connect to the broader purpose of the business and how the work being done adds meaning and impact and the following is the key to doing that:

Create a sense of purpose:

Companies should develop clear language around their mission, communicate it to employees, and invite them to be part of it.

Build a sense of meaning and impact:

Companies need to value each employee’s skills, knowledge, and abilities, and let them use them to contribute in a meaningful way.

Celebrate individual achievements:

There should be a healthy amount of celebration. individual goals and wins – even if they fall short of company goals.

Give employees a sense of progress:

Progress is important for morale and productivity, so companies need to give their employees a sense of where they’re going.

Provide autonomy:

Autonomy is the ability to make appropriate decisions over one’s scope of work, at any level in the company.

Give employees a sense of ownership:

Leaders and managers need to sometimes be hands-off and let people make mistakes so that they continue to learn and grow.

Briefly explain how Centrical has real impact on engagement and company performance. Centrical provides employees everything they need to be successful by showing them their real-time performance and motivating them with gamification and closing knowledge gaps with A.I. driven, personalised learning and coaching. The solution inspires and personally guides employee success and growth by making every moment actionable.

Why is it crucial to make employees the centre of business success? The post-pandemic world continues to look different for a variety of reasons, because of both macro-scale economic reasons and personal life changes. There is already a dramatic labour shortage that is creating real challenges and opportunities in the workforce. Challenges for businesses to keep up operations, but also an opportunity to build the workplace culture of the future. Employees desire strong company culture because now, perhaps more than ever, there needs to be a clear purpose as to why someone would give their best.

How does this then translate into a better customer service experience? Every customer experience starts with an employee experience. Engaged employees care about what they do, and invest more in selfdevelopment which is great for quality and efficiency, which in turn helps with delivering great customer experiences. Knowledgeable, brand-championing, loyal employees combined with happy, raving fan customers are the essence of a successful business Is unlocking employee potential at the core of the Centrical platform? Absolutely! As humans, we all have a thirst for learning but the thirst does not always drive us to quench it. Centrical nudges you to learn what you need when you need it with personalised micro-learning thanks to the AI in the platform and the advanced gamification in the platform helps keep you motivated and engaged healthily and sustainably.

Motivation is a key factor in employee performance success. What are some of the key ways the platform keeps motivation high? Motivation can be broken down into two main categories: Extrinsic and intrinsic. I like to explain extrinsic as ‘loud’ but short lasting. Extrinsic rewards are tangible things that have a monetary value. They absolutely work in the short term for many employees but the results don’t tend to last long after the reward is provided and if the reward is constantly used as an incentive then the reward itself tends to have a depreciating effect. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand tends to be ‘quiet’ but has a much longer-lasting impact. Intrinsic rewards are intangible, personal development, opportunities, completion of meaningful tasks, autonomy and responsibility, a sense of competence and progress, the mastery of knowledge or skill and feeling pride in what one does.

Centrical are sponsoring this year’s Australian Service Excellence Awards. Why is it important to support awards that recognise the achievements of customer service experts?

Employee success translates to great customer experiences and successful business. So much of what we do is driven around supporting employees and managers to achieve their goals and recognise success at the moment of truth. However, all those micro-recognitions should be building towards something bigger (a sense of achievement, progress and mastery) and the Australian Service Excellence Awards are the quintessence of that. As Centrical continues to grow in this region we want to support industry bodies that share similar values to centrical, just like CSIA.